


Full of Weeping

by inkandchocolate



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-20
Updated: 2010-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-09 14:45:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkandchocolate/pseuds/inkandchocolate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You were the smart one, the quiet one, the shy one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full of Weeping

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Written for the Buffy Angel Lyric Wheel Challenge #3: Season One Theme. Thanks to JustHuman for the poem/lyrics to Stolen Childe. Poem by Yeats. Song by Elevendrums, among others (see end of fic for lyrics.) Beta thanks to Criss and zahra.

You were the smart one, the quiet one, the shy one.

You felt like you were never going to change. Growing up was a slow process right up until sophomore year. Before then it was a slow fade of day to week to month, season to never-changing season; a blur of XanderJesseWillow days and weekends, not one of them more remarkable than the next.

You grew your hair long. You wore pigtails and plaid skirts and knee socks. You studied because you liked it, and read because you loved it. Books were little worlds for you to lose yourself in, and if the boys never understood it, at least they never made fun. You discovered Fuel, a distrust of the facts present about cloning, and an embarrassing depth of sadness over the death of James Herriott. You confessed the last to Xander and he held your hand while you cried, even though he didn't know who the tears were for.

You laughed a lot before that year. You played 'Anywhere But Here,' and Monopoly, and backgammon. And for one entire sticky, sweltering July the three of you played Pictionary in Jesse's basement every single day. You always won, unless you decided to let them win.

You never, ever told them when you let them win. Later, it will seem very important to you that you kept this to yourself. At the time, you just thought it was fair.

You fell in love without trying, and every time he smiled at you, one side of that the grin higher than the other, your heart ached. You watched the way Jesse looked at Cordelia. Later you watched the way Xander looked at Buffy. You knew they wouldn't ever look at you like that. Only one of those realizations hurt you, but it was the kind of pain that wrapped itself under your heart and squeezed until you couldn't breathe.

You didn't blame Buffy. Or Xander. You only blamed Cordelia a little.

You still don't know why Buffy was so nice to you. You might, in some long-off future time, find that it was something to do with Fate, and other words that people will use to explain away a coincidence that seems too perfect. You don't ask yourself why too often, though.

You never really believed in specialness. Not in that way. Not in the Buffy way -- Chosen One, Destiny -- all words for a thing that seemed even less real than the faeries in that Yeats poem: "Come away oh human child/To the waters and the wild/With a faery hand in hand." You wished with everything in you that you could go back to a simpler time, when the supernatural wasn't real. Or necessary. You never wanted to believe that the monsters under the bed were waiting to crawl out and devour you, some dark fairy tale come true.

You cried a lot after that night at the Bronze. Before Xander walked away from your doorstep, you put your hand against his shirt and let the dust cling to your palm, gritty on soft, sweaty skin. Xander just watched you, and never said a word. When you walked into the house with your hand covered in gray dust and your cheeks covered in tear tracks, your mother said to do fold your laundry.

You said yes. You always said yes. When it came time to do the things that mattered and the things that didn't really matter at all, you were the one who said yes.

=end=

**STOLEN CHILD**  
Lyrics by W.B. Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland  
Of sleuth wood in the lake  
There lies a leafy island  
Where flapping herons wake  
The drowsy water rats  
There we've hid our fairy vats  
Full of berries  
And of reddest stolen cherries.

CHORUS  
Come away oh human child  
To the waters and the wild  
With a faery hand in hand  
For the world's more full of weeping  
Than you can understand

Where the wave of moonlight glosses  
The dim grey sands with light  
By far off furthest rosses  
We foot it all the night  
Weaving olden dances  
Mingling hands and mingling glances  
Till the moon has taken flight  
To and fro we leap  
And chase the frothy bubbles  
Whilst the world is full of troubles  
And is anxious in its sleep.

CHORUS

Where the wandering water gushes  
From the hills above glen car  
In pools among the rushes  
That scarce could bathe a star  
We seek for slumbering trout  
And whispering in their ears  
Give them unquiet dreams  
Leaning softly out  
From ferns that drop their tears  
Over the young streams

CHORUS

Away with us he's going  
The solemned eyed  
He'll hear no more the lowing  
Of the calves on the warm hillside  
Or the kettle on the hob  
Sing peace unto his breast  
Or see the brown mice bob  
Round and round the oatmeal chest.

CHORUS   
For he comes, the human child  
To the waters and the wild  
With a faery hand in hand  
For the world's more full of weeping  
Than you can understand.


End file.
